A hierarchical naming system known as the Domain Name System (DNS) allows computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network to be referred to by names, such as www.foo.com. DNS servers cooperate to translate domain names that are meaningful to humans into numeric addresses that are used for computer-to-computer communication.
DNS servers can be targets of “domain jacking,” whereby an attacker hijacks control of a domain name. Conventional security measures for DNS servers do not provide a robust defense against domain jacking. In the simplest form of attack, an administrator's account credentials are guessed, or gained via a man-in-the-middle attack by way of malware on the administrator's computer. Once these credentials have been compromised, attackers can then modify records used by the DNS servers to direct traffic for the domain elsewhere, such as a propaganda website or a phishing website.